Wake Forest University celebrates Black History Month, honoring the contributions of African Americans to the American experience. This month also provides Special Collections & Archives an opportunity to highlight our resources documenting this history. For those interested in viewing our collections, please contact us at archives@wfu.edu to schedule a visit. We are open Monday–Friday from 10 AM to 4 PM and by appointment.

Our ever-expanding Digital Collections make more Black history materials accessible online, allowing researchers and users to explore them anytime, day or night. As the university continues to acknowledge and respond to its history of enslavement, I wanted to again share To Stand with and for Humanity: Essays from the Wake Forest University Slavery, Race and Memory Project. We also host videos from Commemorating the Enslaved, an event hosted by Wake Forest every spring since 2019. This event remembers those enslaved individuals who were sold by or rented out to work for Wake Forest College, the institution that became Wake Forest University.

We recently concluded a year-long exhibit, curated by Megan Mulder, showcasing our African American/Black Arts Poetry Pamphlet Collection. This collection features poetry pamphlets and broadsides by 20th-century Black authors, many published by African American presses. We encourage researchers to explore this valuable collection, which is listed online. Additionally, we are actively expanding our holdings in this area and look forward to collaborating with Wake Forest faculty and their classes.

SCA has been actively working on our Expanding Wake Voices oral history project, and we recently received a generous donation to support a focus on Black alumni. To advance this effort, we are collaborating with archivist Dominique Luster and The Luster Company to conduct our first round of interviews over the next several months. Expanding Wake Voices is part of our larger oral history initiative documenting the history of Wake Forest. Many interviews highlighting the Black experience are available—simply search using the keywords “Black alumni” or “African American.”

Our History of Wake Forest University Timeline also highlights Black history. Currently, 164 entries are categorized under the Diversity tag, many of which focus on the African American experience. If you know of individuals and events which should be included and add, please let us know.

Finally, we have a number of resources and subject guides, listed below.

We will share more upcoming posts about our collections for Black History Month, but as always, watch for them through the year. The goal for an archives is always preservation and access–we collect so our materials can be used. It is important for Special Collections & Archives to gather these diverse materials to better reflect the broad scope of the Wake Forest and Winston-Salem experience and the many voices of those who live, study, and work here.

Oral history interview. 2015

Oral history interview, 2015